French 1600-1682 Claude Lorrain Galleries In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition. In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography. Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno). John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"  Related Paintings of Claude Lorrain :. | Landscape with Figures Before (mk17) | The Rape of Europa sd | Sermon on the Mount (mk17) | Landschaft mit der Nymphe Egeria und Konig Numa | Landscape with the Temptations of St.Anthony Abbot |
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LEONARDO da Vinci
Italian High Renaissance Painter and Inventor, 1452-1519 Italian High Renaissance Painter and Inventor, 1452-1519 Florentine Renaissance man, genius, artist in all media, architect, military engineer. Possibly the most brilliantly creative man in European history, he advertised himself, first of all, as a military engineer. In a famous letter dated about 1481 to Ludovico Sforza, of which a copy survives in the Codice Atlantico in Milan, Leonardo asks for employment in that capacity. He had plans for bridges, very light and strong, and plans for destroying those of the enemy. He knew how to cut off water to besieged fortifications, and how to construct bridges, mantlets, scaling ladders, and other instruments. He designed cannon, very convenient and easy of transport, designed to fire small stones, almost in the manner of hail??grape- or case-shot (see ammunition, artillery). He offered cannon of very beautiful and useful shapes, quite different from those in common use and, where it is not possible to employ cannon ?? catapults, mangonels and trabocchi and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general use. And he said he made armoured cars, safe and unassailable, which will enter the serried ranks of the enemy with their artillery ?? and behind them the infantry will be able to follow quite unharmed, and without any opposition. He also offered to design ships which can resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon, and powder and smoke. The large number of surviving drawings and notes on military art show that Leonardo claims were not without foundation, although most date from after the Sforza letter. Most of the drawings, including giant crossbows (see bows), appear to be improvements on existing machines rather than new inventions. One exception is the drawing of a tank dating from 1485-8 now in the British Museum??a flattened cone, propelled from inside by crankshafts, firing guns. Another design in the British Museum, for a machine with scythes revolving in the horizontal plane, dismembering bodies as it goes, is gruesomely fanciful. Most of the other drawings are in the Codice Atlantico in Milan but some are in the Royal Libraries at Windsor and Turin, in Venice, or the Louvre and the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Two ingenious machines for continuously firing arrows, machine-gun style, powered by a treadmill are shown in the Codice Atlantico. A number of other sketches of bridges, water pumps, and canals could be for military or civil purposes: dual use technology. Leonardo lived at a time when the first artillery fortifications were appearing and the Codice Atlantico contains sketches of ingenious fortifications combining bastions, round towers, and truncated cones. Models constructed from the drawings and photographed in Calvi works reveal forts which would have looked strikingly modern in the 19th century, and might even feature in science fiction films today. On 18 August 1502 Cesare Borgia appointed Leonardo as his Military Engineer General, although no known building by Leonardo exists. Leonardo was also fascinated by flight. Thirteen pages with drawings for man-powered aeroplanes survive and there is one design for a helicoidal helicopter. Leonardo later realized the inadequacy of the power a man could generate and turned his attention to aerofoils. Had his enormous abilities been concentrated on one thing, he might have invented the modern glider.
Marianne von Werefkin
Marianne von Werefkin (Russian, 10 September 1860, Tula, Russia - 6 February 1938, Ascona, Switzerland), born Marianna Wladimirowna Werewkina (transliteration Marianna Vladimirovna Verevkina), was a Russian-Swiss Expressionist painter. Marianne von Werefkin was born the daughter of the commander of the Ekaterinaburg Regiment. In 1880, she became a student of Ilya Repin, the most important painter of Russian Realism. Her progress was dealt a setback by a hunting accident in 1888 in which she shot her right hand, the one with which she painted. In 1892 she met Alexej von Jawlensky, who desired to be her protege, and in 1896 she, Jawlensky, and their servant moved to Munich. For the sake of Jawlensky's painting, Werefkin interrupted her painting for almost ten years. She created her first expressionist works in 1907. In these she followed Paul Gauguin's and Louis Anquetin's style of "surface painting", while also showing the influence of Edvard Munch. In 1909, the Neue Kenstlervereinigung Menchen (New Association of Artists in Munich, NKVM) was founded. It became a forum of exhibitions and programming. At the outbreak of the First World War, they immigrated to Switzerland, near Geneva. They later moved to Zurich. By 1918, they had separated, and Werefkin moved alone to Ascona, on Lago Maggiore. In 1924 she founded the artist group "Grober Bar" (i.e., Big Bear, Ursa Major).
Thomas Patch
1725 - 1782 was an English painter, engraver and caricaturist. He made a living by basing himself in Italy and undertaking commissions from rich young British men on Grand tours.His paintings today are in the Royal Collection and various museums. Patch was thrown out of Rome for a homosexual act. Patch was born in Exeter in 1725, the son of a doctor. He had not completed his medical studies when he came to Rome in 1747 as a grand tourist and where he met Joshua Reynolds. Initially he worked for Joseph Vernet, creating landscapes of Tivoli and pastiches of Vernet's work. He was forced to leave Rome after some homosexual He was in Florence in 1755, where he was commissioned to paint people on their Grand tours. Here he was assisted by his friendship with Sir Horace Mann, who was the British envoy and therefore a point of contact with British tourists arriving in Florence. While there he completed studies of human physiognomy, looking at the expressions and facial types as well as completing portraits of many in the British society in Florence. He also studied the old masters and published studies of them. Towards the end of his life his output of paintings slowed.Patch was also known to be an art dealer. In about 1763, Patch completed three views of Florence that are now part of the Royal Collection. They are thought to have been bought by George III. On October 19, 1767, he was enterprising enough to witness the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius which he painted from both the land and the sea.